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Apple today showed off their latest bit of techno-lust, the MacBook Air and I must say it’s rather gorgeous. It’s lighter, slimmer and more powerful than ever, and it even costs less! Also worth noting is that they no longer give you the option replacing the harddrive with a flash drive, as flash drives now come as standard! So all in all a fantastic piece of kit… but it doesn’t end there, as with previous models the MacBook Air doesn’t come with an optical drive built in, but it did come with an installer DVDROM should you need to re-install the OS (which you did by sticking the DVDROM in another Mac on your network). But that was never an elegant solution, not up to scratch with Apple’s usual ease of use. So this time Apple have replaced the DVDROM with a USB flash stick! Which I might add, happens to be one of the best looking USB sticks I’ve ever seen!

But it doesn’t end there either… Apple also updated their iLife suite but they didn’t include iDVD in their updates, it’s not even on the DVD, although you can still get the old version off their website as a download.

but of course this is Apple, so there’s one more thing!

Apple gave a sneak peak of Lion, it’s next OSX 10.7, but what they also previewed was their new Mac App Store, not to be confused with their App Store (which sells apps for iOS devices, like the iPhone, iPod and iPad)… oh no, this new store sells software for your Macintosh.

So how long before Apple no longer supplies, or start limiting supplies of it’s software on physical media such as DVD’s? This is many advantages, for both Apple and the consumers, limits piracy, and allows the user easier updates and installation. It won’t be long before you can purchase all of your Mac software this way. Note Apple are about to complete building their $1bn data centre, just outside silicon valley.

When Apple released the iMac without a floppy drive the press went crazy, saying Apple was mad, but of course they were bang on the money, (Shift Happens are you ready for it?) then they went after the audio CD with iTunes and the iPod, they’re after the movie industry and DVDs with downloaded movies, direct to your iOS devices and iTunes, plus their hobby the Apple TV (plus it’s worth mentioning they’ve never included any sort of BluRay drive or playback on the Mac)… and now they’re after the software industry and DVDROM. They may not have given the DVDROM a good kicking just yet, but they’ve got their sights on it, and going by past experience, they’re probably succeed.